The Constitution of Meaning in the Mathematics Classroom
| Author: | Jörissen, Stefan |
| Abstract: | |
| The poster reveals the highly multimodal character of explanations given by mathematics professors at university level. The conclusions presented in the poster result from an analysis of 30 video-taped lessons given by different professors. The lessons were recorded and analyzed using CA methodology. In addition, some sequences were analyzed from a semiotic point of view as suggested by Hoffmann (2003). The multimodal phenomena in the sequences were classified with a taxonomy inspired by O’Halloran (2004, 2005). Each phenomenon was systematically assigned to a semiotic resource (e. g. natural language, mathematical symbolism), to a sense modality (e. g. optical, acoustic) and to a physical medium (e. g. blackboard, voice, paper). These categories allow a very precise analysis of the relations between the phenomena in question. The research proves that mathematical meaning does not arise from one or two predominant semiotic resources or media, but from a complex interplay between different resources, sense modalities and media. The poster gives special attention to a diagrammatic presentation of these findings. The classes of the three main categories mentioned above are displayed as the three sides of a rectangular cuboid. So each phenomenon (realized in a specific semiotic resource, modality and medium) can be placed in the three dimensions of the cuboid, and this representation offers a vivid way to illustrate the relations between the semiotic resources, modalities and media. The poster will exemplify this method by means of some phenomena, represented by pictures or transcripts taken from the video sequences. Thus the poster contributes to the discussion on the scholarly representation of mutlimodal communication. |
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